Janet in accounts is turning 40 and you know what that means…cake for everyone! Yes, surely we all look forward to birthdays in the office but some grinches are calling for coffee culture to be banned... and that’s enough to make us choke on our black forest.
The Faculty of Dental Surgery at Britain’s Royal College of Surgeons (otherwise known as kill-joys) has come out with a warning that too many sweet treats at work are responsible for poor dental health and rising obesity.
It’s even come out with a position statement, with its 5 top tips for making healthier choices in the office:
- Consider low sugar alternatives
- Reduce portion sizes
- Avoid snacking and keep sugar as a lunchtime treat
- Develop a “sugar schedule” to help limit your team’s sugar intake: For example, if you know there are birthdays on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, arrange to have cake at Friday lunchtime to celebrate all three, rather than on each individual day.
- Location, location, location: Research suggests that people will eat more sweets if they are nearby and visible than if they are placed further away. So think about where sugary products are positioned in the office and put them out of eyesight.
Here at ntpages, we’re obviously all about health and wellness so we understand why the authorities are asking us to cut back on sweets at work. More and more research is showing that sugar is a toxin, responsible for many leading causes of disease and death.
But the guidelines aren’t without their critics.
One article published in the Sydney Morning Herald, for instance, suggests that instead of blaming cakes for our health, we should focus instead on smartphone risks, workplace stress, poor work conditions, remote offices that can only offer staff vending machine snacks, and after-work take away dinners picked up after a long and hard day at the office.
Writer Kasey Edwards argues, “As any serious obesity researcher knows, the causes of obesity are far more complex than a cream sponge. Among other things, obesity is a result of poverty, a food industry that is permitted to pack our food with sugar and other processed crap and market it as "healthy", and a bums-on-seats work culture that is continually expecting a greater slice of employees' lives.”
“Yet we're now to blame obesity on Margaret from accounts who was kind enough to bring in a cake for her colleague's birthday.”
The article goes on to stress that bringing cakes and treats to the office is all part of caring for colleagues. And celebrating their successes, such as birthdays and promotions.
“Rather than attacking the women who often give up their time and their food for free to add a little more joy and sense of community in a workplace, how about we get serious and talk about the real workplace cultural issues and the genuine causes of employees' poor health,” Edwards says.
We like to look at the issue holistically. Clearly, eating sugary cakes and biscuits every day isn’t going to help with our long-term health. And maybe workplaces need to be aware of how much unhealthy food is being brought into the office. But as Edwards points out, there are many other health risks at work that should also be addressed.
